The Push-to-THE-Woman : 3rd April 2022 (Paris) : Dominique Laurent

Dominique Laurent originally gave this text at the ‘Grandes Assises virtuelles internationales de l’AMP – La femme n’existe pas’ – on 3rd April 2022, at the Maison de la mutualité, Paris and on Zoom.

Dominique Laurent is an Analyst Member of the School, a member of the ECF and WAP. She practices psychoanalysis in Paris.

Translated by Raphael Montague

Published in The Lacanian Review (TLR 13 Dec 2022), Issue 13, December 2022

Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors A-Z (Laurent)

Headings & Location of References

P73 The Push-to-the-Woman: From Structure to Logic

P73 The “push-to-the-woman” is an expression used by Lacan in “L’étourdit” in 1972, in relation to the Schreber case, ….. See L’Étourdit : 14^th July 1972 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

Anthony Chadwick’s translation, p50-51 of www.Freud2Lacan.com : I could here, by developing the inscription that I made through a hyperbolic function of Schreber’s psychosis, demonstrate in what it contains of the sardonic the effect of the push-to-the-woman which is specified in the first quantifier; having made very clear that it is from the irruption of A-Father as without reason that is precipitated here the effect felt as of forcing, in the field of an Other to be thought as the most foreign in every sense. See also Autres Ecrits : 2001 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

P73 …which he had clarified and theorized at length between the end of 1957 and the start of 1958 in his “On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis.” In the text, published in 1959, there is no question of a push-to-the-woman. Lacan rationalizes Schreber transformation into a woman by redefining the Oedipus complex through foreclosure.

Possibly P190 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : Homosexuality, supposedly a determinant of paranoiac psychosis, is really a symptom articulated in its process.

This process began at an early stage, at the moment when the first sign of it appeared in Schreber in the form of one of those hypnopompic ideas, which in their fragility present us with sorts of topographies of the ego, an idea whose imaginary function is sufficiently indicated to us in its form: that it would be beautiful to be a woman undergoing the act of copulation.

OR p194 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : For it is a truth of experience for analysis that the subject is presented with the question of his existence, not in terms of the anxiety that it arouses at the level of the ego, and which is only one element in the series, but as an articulated question: ‘What am I there?’, concerning his sex and his contingency in being, namely, that, on the one hand, he is a man or a woman, and, on the other, that he might not be, the two conjugating their mystery, and binding it in the symbols of procreation and death.
That the question of his existence bathes the subject, supports him, invades him, tears him apart even, is shown in the tensions, the lapses, the phantasies that the analyst encounters; and, it should be added, by means of elements of the particular discourse in which this question is articulated in the Other. It is because these phenomena are ordered in the figures of this discourse that they have the fixity of symptoms, are legible and can be resolved when deciphered.

& p206 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : Or does she believe perhaps that it was never a question of real castration in the complex of the same name!

No doubt she has good grounds for noticing the ambiguity there is in regarding as equivalents the transformation of the subject into a woman (Verweiblichung) and castration (for that is certainly the meaning of Entmannung). But she does not see that this ambiguity is that of the subjective structure itself, which produces it here: which involves only that which is confined at the imaginary level to the transformation of the subject into a woman, namely, precisely that which makes it decline from any heritage from which it may legitimately expect the attribution of a penis to his person. [p207] This because if being and having are mutually exclusive in principle, they are confounded, at least as far as the result is concerned, when it is a question of a lack. Which does not prevent the distinction between them being of decisive importance subsequently.

As one realizes in observing that it is not by being foreclosed to the penis, but by having to be the phallus that the patient is doomed to become a woman.

…

No doubt the divination of the unconscious very soon warned the subject that, incapable as he is of being the phallus that the mother lacks, he is left with the solution of being the woman that men lack.

This is the meaning of this phantasy, his account of which has often been commented on and which I quoted above as belonging to the incubation period of his second illness, namely the idea ‘that it would be beautiful being a woman submitting to copulation'” This pons asinorum of the Schreberian literature is here pinned in place.

P73 . When he introduces the push-to-the-woman, this formula is accompanied by the formulas of sexuation where it is written: “The woman does not exist.” :

Seminar XX Encore (1972–1973) : From 21^st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan ,

Seminar XX 20^th February 1973, pVIII 14 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : Since I still have a half-hour to try to introduce you – if I dare express myself in this way – it is what is involved on the side of the woman. So then, it is one of two things, either what I write has no meaning – this is the conclusion of this little book and this is why I beg you to consult it – or when I write the following: “x.fx [The ” has a bar above it], which is read as a function, as an unusual, unwritten, function I must say, even in the logic of quantors, namely, the bar, the negation being brought to bear on the not-all and not on the function. When I say the following: that there is ranked – if I may express myself thus – there is ranked under the banner of women some speaking being or other, it is starting from the fact that it is only grounded by being not-all, and as such, ranked (13) with the phallic function.

This is what defines the…wait there, huh! The…the…the…the what? The woman precisely. Except for the fact that The woman – let us give her a capital T while we are at it, that would be nice – except for the fact that The woman can only be written by barring The. There is no, the woman, the definite article to designate the universal. There is no The woman since – I already risked this term, and why would I think twice about it? – since, of her essence, she is not not-all (elle n’est pas-toute).

So that, to accentuate something to which I see my pupils much less attached when they read me than the slightest second fiddle when he is animated by the desire of getting a Masters. There is not a single one of my pupils who does not produce some sort of mess about, about something or other, the lack of the signifier, the signifier of the lack of the signifier, and other nonsense about the phallus. While I am designating for you in this The, the signifier – after all current and even indispensable, the proof is that earlier I spoke about the man and the woman. It is indispensable that this The should be a signifier, that it is by this The that I symbolise the signifier. The signifier with which it is altogether indispensable to mark the place which cannot be left empty because of the fact that this The is the signifier whose characteristic is that it is the only one that can signify nothing. But this simply by grounding the status of The woman in the fact that she is not-all, which does not allow the woman to be talked about.

P74 On the Dissolution of the Imaginary Identification with Being the Woman

P74 One morning the hypnopompic idea arises “that it really must be rather pleasant to be a woman succumbing to intercourse.” [1] He (Schreber) points out that this “idea was so foreign to [his] whole nature” that if it had come to his full consciousness he would have rejected it with indignation. [1] Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My, Nervous illness, trans. Ida McAlpine and Richard A. Hunter (New York New York Review of Books, 2000), 46.

See Memoirs of my nervous illness : 1903 : D. P. Schreber on this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Schreber) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z or published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Homepage (Schreber’s MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS with Lacan’s intro to the French translation. Part 1, Part 2,)

P74 Lacan underlines the first of the series occurring at his mother’s home as a witness to the dissolution of the identification by which he had assumed the mother’s desire until then.[2] [2] Jacques Lacan, “On a Question Prior to any Possible Treatment of Psychosis,” in Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink (London: Norton, 2006), 472.

P207 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : 7. Here the identification, whatever it may be, by which the subject assumed the desire of the mother, triggers off, as a result of being shaken, the dissolution of the imaginary tripod (remarkably enough, it was in his mother’s apartment, where he had taken refuge, that the subject had his first attack of anxious confusion with suicidal raptus: S. 39-40-IV).

P74 He adds that “[d]ivination by the unconscious no doubt warned the subject very early on that, unable to be the phallus the mother is missing, there remained the solution of being the woman that men are missing.”[3] [3] ibid.

See On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis : December 1955-January 1956 [1958]) – two most important parts of Seminar III : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or See On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis : December 1955-January 1956 [1958]) – two most important parts of Seminar III : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

P207 of Alan Sheridan’s translation of On a Question Prior to any Possible Treatment of Psychosis, as in [2] : No doubt the divination of the unconscious very soon warned the subject that, incapable as he is of being the phallus that the mother lacks, he is left with the solution of being the woman that men lack. NOTE, JE prefers Alan Sheridan’s translation, using lacks, to the one in the text.

P74 The Soul without the Organ

P74 Schreber is now dealing with an Other of the message and with the jouissance that ravages his body. This is the moment when “the fleeting-improvised-men,” appear, the first of which seems to be that of his wife.[4] [4]. Daniel Paul Schreber, op. cit., p18. See [1] above

P74 Correlatively to the triggering of the “nerve language,” a meaning is imposed.[5] [5]. Ibid., p54. See [1] above.

P74-75 As he was writing his Memoirs, it occurred to him that the divine plan was “to commit soul murder on me, and to hand over my body in the manner of a female harlot. [7] [7] Ibid., 66. See [1] above.

P75 In Encore, taking up the Aristotelian perspective, Lacan specifies that “the soul is nothing other than the supposed identicalness (identité) of this body to everything people think in order to explain it…” [8] [8] Jacques Lacan, Encore: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans Bruce Fink (London: Norton, 1998), pll0 :

Seminar XX Encore (1972–1973) : From 21^st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan :

Seminar XX 8^th May 1973 : pXI 8-9 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation from original tape recordings (NOTE this account differs from the one edited by Jacques-Alain Miller & translated by Bruce Fink & quoted by Dominique Laurent) : And on the other hand, it is a fact that it snivels – and why the devil does it? When corporally, imaginarily or symbolically someone steps on your foot, you are affected as they say. And what relationship is there between this snivelling and the fact implied by warding off the unexpected, in other words that you make yourself scarce (qu’on se barre)? This is a popular formula, but it clearly says what it means because it rejoins exactly the barred subject, some consonance of which you have heard here. The subject se barre, in effect, as I said, and more often than in his turn.

You should note here simply that there is every advantage in unifying the expression for the symbolic, the imaginary and the real; as, I am saying it to you in parenthesis, Aristotle did, in not distinguishing movement from alloiosis. Change and motion in space were for him – but he did not know it – were for him the fact that the subject makes himself scarce. Obviously he did not have the true categories, but all the same he had a good sense of things. In other words, the important thing is that all of that sticks together sufficiently for the body to subsist, barring any accident as they say, external or internal; which (8) means that the body is taken for what it presents itself to be: a closed body, as they say.

Who can fail to see that the soul, is nothing other than its supposed identity to itself? With everything that is thought up to explain it. In short, the soul is what one thinks about the body, from the dominant side. And people reassure themselves by thinking that it thinks likewise. Hence the diversity of explanations: when it is supposed to think secretly, there are secretions, when it is supposed to think concretely, there are concretions, when it is supposed to think information, well there are hormones. Or still further it gives itself over to AND (DNA), Adonai, Adonis, in short whatever you want!

All this to bring you to what I all the same announced at the start about the subject of the unconscious – because I am not simply talking like that, as if I were whistling in the wind – that it is truly curious that it has not been put to the test in psychology that the structure of thinking reposes on language, which language – this is all that is new in this term structure – the others, qualified by this label, can make of it what they wish, but I for my part what I point out, is that language comprises a considerable inertia, which can be seen in comparing its functioning to those signs called mathematical, mathemes, solely from the fact that they are integrally transmitted. We have absolutely no knowledge of what they mean, but they are transmitted. It nevertheless remains that they are only transmitted with the help of language, and this is what makes the whole business so lame.

P75 The Death of the Subject [le sujet est mort]

P75 This ravage is such that at one point in mid-March 1894 the vital feeling of existence is radically altered. Lacan isolates it under the term “death of the subject.”

p208 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : 8. No doubt had he [probably Sigmund Freud] not three years later (I911-I4) failed to grasp the true cause of the reversal of the position of indignation, which was first raised in the person of the subject by the idea of Entmannung: it is precisely because in the interval the subject had died.

This, at least, was what the voices, always informed by the right sources and always reliable in their information service, made known to him (Schreber) after the event with the date and the name of the newspaper in which the announcement had appeared in the list of recent deaths (S. 81-VII).

P473 of Bruce Fink’s translation : 8. Three years after 1911 he probably would not have missed the true reason for the reversal of Schreber’s sense of indignartion – initially aroused in him by the idea of Entmannung – which was precisely the fact that in the interval the subject had died.

NOTE : The two phrases are different: ‘the death of the subject’ which is given in Raphael Montague’s translation of this text & ‘the subject had died’ which is both Alan Sheridan’s & Bruce Fink’s translation of Jacques Lacan’s text. It would be possible to substitute ‘the subject is dead’ [le sujet est mort] in both these translations & ‘the subject has died’ in Raphael Montague’s translation.

P75 Schreber refers to it as “soul murder” or “the abduction of the soul.” [9] [9] Daniel Paul Schreber, op. cit., p34. translation modified by the author. See [1] above.

P75 During a time when “the subject was dead,” Schreber’ who describes himself as “a leper corpse leading another leper corpse,” [10][10] Ibid.,94. Translation modified by the author. See [1] above.

P75 which Lacan describes in 1958 as “topographical […] regression – to the mirror stage, […] reduced here to its mortal impact.”[1l] [11] Jacques Lacan, “On a Question,” op. cit., p473.

p208 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : But this is not a career that one takes up in one’s late fifties without experiencing some feeling of unfamiliarity. Hence the faithful portrait that the voices, the annalists I would say, gave him of himself as a ‘leprous corpse leading to another leprous corpse’ (S. 92-VII), a very brilliant description, it must be admitted, of an identity reduced to a confrontation with its psychical double, but which moreover renders patent the subject’s regression – a topographical, not a genetic, regression – to the mirror stage, even though the relation with the specular other is reduced to its fatal aspect.

NOTE The difference between ‘reduced here to its mortal impact’ and ‘even though the relation with the specular other is reduced to its fatal aspect.’ is marked. Without looking at the original French, I trust Alan Sheridan’s translation more.

P75 For Lacan, this is “a disturbance that occurred at the inmost juncture of the subject’s sense of life,” [12] an effect of the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father and the hole in phallic signification. [12] lbid., p466.

p201 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : It is clear that what we are presented with here is a disorder caused at the most personal juncture between the subject and his sense of being alive; the censorship that mutilates the text before the addition mentioned by Schreber to the somewhat distorted explanations that he has offered of his method leaves one to think that he associated with the names of living people facts that could not have been published on account of the conventions of the time. Moreover, the following chapter is missing in its entirety, …

NOTE Once again the two translations differ and I trust Alan Sheridan’s more.

P75 This abduction is accomplished in a transformation of language itself, into “the basic-language [la langue de fond).” [13] [13] Daniel Paul Schreber, op. cit., p26. See [1] above.

P75 as J-A Miller has commented. [14] [14] Jacques-Alain Miller, Du symptôme au fantasme et retour, 1982-1983, L’orientation lacanienne (annual course delivered within the framework of the Department of Psychoanalysis, The University of Paris VIII, lesson of December l, 1982) Access to this text, in French, is given at http://jonathanleroy.be/2020/12/orientation-lacanienne-jacques-alain-miller/

P76 From Entmannung to Woman

P76 Lacan considers the death of the subject “the true reason for the reversal in Schreber’s sense of indignation” [15] [15] Jacques Lacan, “On a Question,” op. cit., p473.

p208 of Alan Sheridan’s translation :

No doubt had he [probably Sigmund Freud] not three years later (I911-I4) failed to grasp the true cause of the reversal of the position of indignation, which was first raised in the person of the subject by the idea of Entmannung: it is precisely because in the interval the subject had died.

NOTE the two translations ‘true reason’ and ‘true cause’ give different meanings. Once again I suspect that Alan Sheridan’s translation is to be preferred.

P76 When the connection with God is re-established after he is left in the lurch, the feminine voluptuousness, the voluptuousness of the soul, invades him and is accompanied by his consent to his transformation into a woman. He and the World are revitalized. [16] [16] See Schreber, op. cit., p254-5. See [1] above

p76 I could see beyond doubt that the Order of the World imperiously demanded my unmanning, whether I personally liked it or not, and that therefore it was common sense that nothing was left to me but to reconcile myself to the thought [. . .] Nothing of course could beenvisaged as a further consequence of unmanning but fertilization by [the] divine rays for the purpose of creating new human beings. [17] [17] Ibid., p164. See [1] above/

P76 Unlimited Jouissance and the Living

P76-77 The woman that Schreber becomes is distinguished by characteristics of jouissance, a jouissance that is inscribed on the feminine side since it is not localized on an organ. “[T]hat my whole body is filled with nerves of voluptuousness from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, such as is the case only in the adult female body.” [18] [18] Ibid., p243. See [1] above.

For interest, in On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis : December 1955-January 1956 [1958]) – two most important parts of Seminar III : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan : P208-209 of Alan Sheridan’s translation, gives : Personally, I can content myself with the evidence provided by the medical certificates, which give us at the right moment the picture of the patient plunged in catatonic stupor.

As usual, his memories of this period are plentiful. Thus we know that, modifying the custom by which one departs this life feet first, our patient, so as to cross it only in transit, was pleased to keep his feet out of it, that is to say, stuck out of the window under the tendentious pretext of getting some fresh air (S. 172-XII), thus renewing perhaps (let us leave this to be appreciated by those who will be interested here only by its imaginary manifestation) the presentation of his birth.

But this is not a career that one takes up in one’s late fifties without experiencing some feeling of unfamiliarity.

P77 Thc formula of the bond that unites Schreber to his Other seems to be: God enjoys of him [le jouit] as his woman. “God demands a state of constant jouissance […] It is my duty to Provide Him with it. . . ” [19] [19] Ibid., p250 Schreber see [1] above

p77 Schreber in front of his mirror bears witness to a jouissance that, as a result of having to find a way to register itself as feminine, is henceforth tied to the image and to the scopic drive: “That anybody who sees me standing in front of a mirror with the upper part of my body naked would get the undoubted impression of a female trunk -especially when the illusion is strengthened by some feminine adornments. . . . [S]imilar phenomena have never previously been observed on a male body.” [20] [20] Ibid., p248. Schreber see [1] above

p77 “I have to imagine myself as man and woman in one person having intercourse with myself, or somehow have to achieve with myself a certain sexual excitement.” [21] [21] Ibid., p250. Schreber see [1] above

p77 This autoerotic jouissance is also an invention of sexual jouissance as such. Schreber is dealing with two bodies. [22] [22]. François Leguil, “Les deux corps du pousse à la femme [The two bodies of the push to the woman],” Ornicar?, no. 52 (November 2018): p108. A copy is not available currently.

P77 Transformation into a Woman and Gender Choice

P77 This is only accomplished after the death of the subject. In contrast, when Lacan writes the formulas of sexuation, he insists on the subject’s choice of sex. The subject is free, he says, whatever his anatomy and civil status, to choose one side or the other. [23] [23.] Jacques Lacan, Encore, op. cit.,7l-3.

Seminar XX Encore (1972–1973) : From 21^st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

– Rather than the reference given, it is possibly

Seminar XX 19^th December 1972 pIII 18 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, One day I played on a literal slip of the pen, as it is called. I spent the whole of one of my lectures last year on the spelling slip that I had made: You will never know how much I loved you (aimé) (17) addressed to a woman and ending with mé. It has been pointed out to me since that, taken as a slip, that perhaps meant that I was homosexual.

But what I articulated last year, is that when one loves, it is not sex that is at stake.

– OR possibly p79 of Bruce Fink’s translation, Seminar XX 13^th March 1973,

pVIII 3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation of unedited transcriptions : On the other hand, opposite, you have the inscription of something that, for a part of speaking beings, and moreover for every speaking being as is explicitly formulated in Freudian theory, for every human being it is permitted, whatever he may be, provided or not with attributes of masculinity, attributes that remain to be determined, provided or not with these attributes, he can inscribe himself in the other part, and, what he inscribes himself as, is precisely not to allow any universality, to be this not all inasmuch as he has, in short, the choice of positing himself in Fx, or indeed of not being of it.

Such are the only possible definitions of the part described as man or indeed as woman in what finds itself being in this position of inhabiting language.

– There follows what Cormac Gallagher gives as the translation of p71-73 of Bruce Fink’s translation, as quoted in this text. Two points : i) There are differences between his translation and that of Bruce Fink which is edited by Jacques-Alain Miller ii) Cormac Gallagher does not give the Mathematical symbols which have been added in.

Seminar XX 20^th February 1973 pVII 12-14 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation.

If there is no sexual relationship, we would have to see how the enjoyment of the body can be of use to it. It seems to me that I already punctuated – I am pressed for time – it seems to me that I have already punctuated that to take things from the side where it is logically that the quantor [le quanteur ] “x, namely: all x, as a function, a mathematical function of Fx, namely, on the side where one ranges oneself, in short, by choice! Women are free to rank themselves there also if they want to, huh! Everyone knows that, that there are phallic women! It is clear that the phallic function does not prevent men from being homosexuals. But that it is also, indeed, what allows them to situate themselves as man and to approach the woman.

Since what I have to talk about is something different, about The woman, precisely – I am going quickly because I presume I have already sufficiently dinned it in for you to still have it in your heads – I say that unless there is castration, namely, something that says no to this phallic function – and God knows that it is not so simple – there is no chance for the man to enjoy the body of the woman. In other words, to make love. This is the result of analytic experience. That does not prevent him desiring her in every way. Even when this condition is not realised. Not only does he desire her, but he does all sorts of things to her that resemble love in an astonishing way.

Contrary to what Freud puts forward, it is the man – I mean the one who finds himself male without knowing what to do about it, while at the same time being a speaking being – who approaches the woman, as they say, who can even believe that he approaches her. Because in this regard, huh, the convictions of which I spoke the last time, the con-victions are not lacking. Only what he approaches, because this is the cause of his desire, is what I designated as the little o-object. This is precisely the act of love. To make love, as the name indicates, is poetry. But there is a world between poetry and act. The act of love, is the polymorphous perversion of the male. In the case of the speaking being, there is nothing more assured, more coherent, more strict as far as Freudian discourse is concerned.

Since I still have a half-hour to try to introduce you – if I dare express myself in this way – it is what is involved on the side of the woman. So then, it is one of two things, either what I write has no meaning – this is the conclusion of this little book and this is why I beg you to consult it – or when I write the following: “CFC [note “C have a bar on the top of them], which is read as a function, as an unusual, unwritten, function I must say, even in the logic of quantors, namely, the bar, the negation being brought to bear on the not-all and not on the function. When I say the following: that there is ranked – if I may express myself thus – there is ranked under the banner of women some speaking being or other, it is starting from the fact that it is only grounded by being not-all, and as such, ranked (13) with the phallic function.

This is what defines the…wait there, huh! The…the…the…the what? The woman precisely. Except for the fact that The woman – let us give her a capital T while we are at it, that would be nice – except for the fact that The woman can only be written by barring The. There is no, The woman, the definite article to designate the universal. There is no The woman since – I already risked this term, and why would I think twice about it? – since, of her essence, she is not not-all (elle n’est pas-toute).

So that, to accentuate something to which I see my pupils much less attached when they read me than the slightest second fiddle when he is animated by the desire of getting a Masters. There is not a single one of my pupils who does not produce some sort of mess about, about something or other, the lack of the signifier, the signifier of the lack of the signifier, and other nonsense about the phallus. While I am designating for you in this The, the signifier – after all current and even indispensable, the proof is that earlier I spoke about the man and the woman. It is indispensable that this The should be a signifier, that it is by this The that I symbolise the signifier. The signifier with which it is altogether indispensable to mark the place which cannot be left empty because of the fact that this The is the signifier whose characteristic is that it is the only one that can signify nothing. But this simply by grounding the status of The woman in the fact that she is not-all, which does not allow the woman to be talked about.

But on the other hand, if there is no woman, as I might say, who is not excluded, in the nature of things, which is the nature of words – it must indeed be said that what I put forward here, all the same, can be said. Because if there is something that they themselves complain enough about at the moment, it is indeed that, huh! Good! Simply they do not know what they are saying. That is the whole difference between them and me!

If there is then no woman who is not excluded by the nature of things as The woman, it nevertheless remains that if she is excluded by the (14) nature of things, it is precisely because of the fact that by being not-all, she makes sure as The woman of the fact that, with respect to what I designate as the enjoyment of the phallic function they have, as I might say, a supplementary enjoyment. You will note that I said supplementary; because if I had said complementary, huh, where would we be?! We would fall back again into the all.

P77 Once Schreber “has completed his transformation into a woman, the act of divine fecundation will assuredly take place [. . .] a sort of redemption [that] aims only at the creature of the future,” [24] says Lacan. [24]. Jacques Lacan, “On a Question,” op. cit.,475.

See On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis : December 1955-January 1956 [1958]) – two most important parts of Seminar III : Jacques Lacan, at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan :

P211 of Alan Sheridan’s translation, gives : But this digression apart, it remains that we are here beyond the world, which accommodates itself very well to an endless postponement of the realization of its aim.

Certainly, indeed, when Schreber has completed his transformation into a woman, the act of divine fecundation will take place, in which, of course, God could not commit himself in an obscure passage through the organs (S. 3-Introd.). (We must not forget God’s aversion to the living creature.) It is through a spiritual operation, therefore, that Schreber will feel awakening within him the embryonic germ, the stirrings of which he has already experienced in the early stages of his illness.

No doubt the new spiritual humanity of the Schreberian creatures will be entirely engendered through his loins, so that the corrupt, doomed humanity of the present age may be reborn. This is indeed a sort of redemption, since the delusion has been catalogued in this way, but it is a redemption aimed only at the creature of the future, for the creature of the present is struck by a decadence correlative with the capture of the divine rays by the pleasure that rivets them to Schreber (S. 51-2-V).

In this there is adumbrated the dimension of mirage that is even more emphasized by the indefiniteness of the time in which the promise of redemption is suspended, and is profoundly conditioned by the absence of mediation to which the phantasy bears witness.

P78 With the feminine real effect that occurs, Schreber fabricates a relative stabilization without the Name-of-the-Father. We witness a point of arrest in the development of the delirium, and a certain encoding of jouissance. It is also the re-establishment of a relation to reality that henceforth becomes livable, and a certain pacification of the relation to the Other. Lacan does not speak of a cure. [25] [25] Jacques Lacan, The Psychoses: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book III, ed. Jacques_Alain Miller, trans. Russell Grigg (London: Norton, 1993), 86.

See Seminar III The Psychoses (1955-1956) : from 16th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

Seminar III 11^th January 1956 : p86 of Russell Grigg’s translation : I point out to you in advance that this involves the feminine function in its essential symbolic meaning and that we can refind it only at the level of procreation. You will see why. We are not saying emasculation or feminization or fantasy of pregnancy, for this extends to procreation. Here we have what appears to him at a high point in his existence, and not at all at a moment of deficit, in the form of an irruption in the real of something that he has never known, a sudden emergence of a total strangeness that will progressively bring on a radical submersion of all his categories to the point of forcing him into a veritable reshaping of his world.
May we speak of a process of compensation, or even of cure, as some people would not hesitate to do, on the pretext that when his delusion stabilizes the subject presents a calmer state than at its appearance? Is he cured or not? It is a question worth raising, but I think it can only be wrong to speak of a cure here.

What happens, then, when what is not symbolized reappears in the real? It wouldn’t be useless here to bring forward the term defense. Clearly, what appears does so in the register of meaning, in the register of a meaning that comes from nowhere, and which refers to nothing, but is an essential meaning, one that concerns the subject. What intervenes whenever there is a conflict of orders, namely repression, is set in motion at this point. But why doesn’t repression work here, that is, why isn’t what happens when a neurosis is involved the end result?

Before we can know why, we must study the how. I shall focus on what creates the structural difference between neurosis and psychosis.

When a drive, let’s say a feminine or pacifying one, appears in a subject for whom the drive has already been brought into play at different points of his previous symbolization, in his infantile neurosis for example, it manages to express itself in a certain number of symptoms. Thus what is repressed nevertheless expresses itself, repression and the return of the repressed being one and the same thing. The subject has the possibility, within repression, of getting by when something new happens. Compromises are made. This is what characterizes neurosis; it is both the most obvious thing in the world and the thing one doesn’t want to see.

Verwerfung is not at the same level as Vemeinung. When, at the beginning of a psychosis, the nonsymbolized reappears in the real, there are responses made from the side of the mechanism of Vemeinung, but they prove inadequate.

P78 From Real Dialectics to Logic

P78 In “l’Étourdit,” in l972, Lacan introduces the term, push-to-the-woman, in relation to Schreber’s psychosis, bringing it closer to the formulas of female sexuation.[26] [26.] Jacques Lacan, “L’Étourdit,,’ Autres Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 2OOl), 466.

See L’Étourdit : 14^th July 1972 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

Anthony Chadwick’s translation, p50-51 of www.Freud2Lacan.com : I could here, by developing the inscription that I made through a hyperbolic function of Schreber’s psychosis, demonstrate in what it contains of the sardonic the effect of the push-to-The-woman which is specified in the first quantifier; having made very clear that it is from the irruption of A [or ONE]-Father as without reason that is precipitated here the effect felt as of forcing, in the field of an Other to be thought as the most foreign in every sense. See also Autres Ecrits : 2001 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

P78 ln Encore, Phi designates the phallus, as “the signifier that has no signified, the one that is based, in the case of man, on phallic jouissance.” [27] [27]. Jacques Lacan, Encore, op. cit., 8l.

Seminar XX Encore (1972–1973) : From 21^st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

Seminar XX 13^th March 1973, pVIII 5-6 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : How then can we approach, imagine, that this relationship to the Other might be, somewhere, what determines that half – since moreover it is roughly the biological proportion – that half of speaking beings refer themselves to it? This is nevertheless what is written here on the board by this arrow starting from the The, from this The that cannot say itself. Nothing can be said about The woman. The woman has a relationship, a relationship with this S of O barred – S(Ø) – on the one hand – and it is already in this respect that she is reduplicated, that she is not-all since on the other hand she can have this relationship with this capital, F, that in analytic theory we designate by this phallus that I specify as being the signifier. The signifier which does not have a signified. The very one that is supported, that is supported in the case of man by this enjoyment [jouissance] of which, in order to point it up, I will say, I will put forward today that what best symbolises it, what is it after all, if not something that the importance of masturbation sufficiently underlines in our practice, what is it, except something which is nothing other, in what I might call favourable cases, than the enjoyment [jouissance] of the idiot?

P78 This threat comes from the first quantifier on the male side: “There exists an x such that phi of x is negated, Lacan calls this “the function of the father” … [28] [28.] Ibid.,74 in French text, p79 in Bruce Fink’s translation. Note: The difference between the translation from unedited transcriptions and the printed version edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, is that in the following version Jacques Lacan is probably pointing at the table of sexuation whilst explaining these points.

Seminar XX 13^th March 1973, pVIII 2-3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation of unedited transcriptions : This having been posited, which ought to make you beware, up to the point to which I may be able to push my elucidation of it this year, of comprehending too quickly what is supported by this inscription, starting from there, namely having taken all prudent precautions, phronesis*, as it is put in the Greek tongue where many things were said that have remained far, in short, from what analytic discourse allows us to articulate. Having taken then these prudent precautions, here is more or less what is written on the board: the recalling of propositional terms, in the mathematical sense, by which any speaking being whatsoever is inscribed on the left or indeed on the right. This inscription being dominated by the fact that on the left, on the left what corresponds to all men – “C – is in function of what is described as Fx, that it takes on its inscription as all; except for the fact that this function finds its limit in the existence of an x by which the function Fx is denied: $x.Fx (Fx has a bar above it). This is what is called the function of the father …

* Phronesis is a Greek team which means ‘practical wisdom’ that has been derived from learning and evidence of practical things. Phronesis leads to breakthrough thinking and creativity and enables the individual to discern and make good judgements about what is the right thing to do in a situation. (https://oxford-review.com/oxford-review-encyclopaedia-terms/phronesis-definition-meaning/ )

P78 … whereby “the non-phi of x as negated [x] founds the exercise [operability] of that which – through castration – deputizes for the sexual relation which cannot be written.” [29] [29] Ibid.,79. Translation modified by the author

Seminar XX 13^th March 1973, pVIII 3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation of unedited transcriptions : … from which there proceeds, in short, by this negation of the proposition Fx, what grounds the exercise of what supplies for the sexual relationship inasmuch as this can in no way be inscribed, what supplies for it by castration.

The all is based here then on the exception posited as the limit to (3) what wholly denies this Fx.

On the other hand, opposite, you have the inscription of something that, for a part of speaking beings, and moreover for every speaking being as is explicitly formulated in Freudian theory, for every human being it is permitted, whatever he may be, provided or not with attributes of masculinity, attributes that remain to be determined, provided or not with these attributes, he can inscribe himself in the other part, and, what he inscribes himself as, is precisely not to allow any universality, to be this not all inasmuch as he has, in short, the choice of positing himself in Fx, or indeed of not being of it.

Such are the only possible definitions of the part described as man or indeed as woman in what finds itself being in this position of inhabiting language.

P78 The first propositional formula on the feminine side has as its correlate a without-limit. The foreclosure would thus lead the psychotic subject to the feminine side. [30] [3]. Anelle Lebovits-Quenehen, “Du pousse à la femme,” La Cause du désir, no. 103. The commentary on this passage from “L’étourdit” resonates with the articles by Frangois Leguil, F. Schreiber, and Jean-Claude Maleval in La lettre mensuelle, no. 114 (December 1992): 10-12. [No copies of these texts are currently available.]

P79 In “L’étourdit,” Lacan reminds us that the push-to-the- woman is “the sardonic precipitation of an effect felt as a forcing,” caused by the irruption of the One-father.

See L’Étourdit : 14^th July 1972 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

Jack W. Stone’s translation, p50-51 of www.Freud2Lacan.com : I could here, to develop the inscription I made by a hyperbolic function, of the psychosis of Schreber, demonstrate what there is of the sardonic in the effect of a push‐to‐the‐woman which is specified by the first quantifier [quanteur]: having made very precise that it is from the irruption of a One‐father [l’irruption d’Un‐père] as without reason, that is precipitated here the effect felt as a forcing, to the field of an Other to be thought as to all sense the most alien.

See also Autres Ecrits : 2001 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

P79 Lacan had referred to this as early as 1958’s “On a Question’ in terms of the moment of the triggering of the psychosis. It is enough that One-father [Un‐père], nothing other than a real father not necessarily the subject father, “situate himself in a tertiary position in any relationship that has as its base the imaginary couple a – a’.” [31] [31] Jacques Lacan, “On a Question,” op. cit., 48l.

P217 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : But let us proceed according to the structural terms that we have outlined.

For the psychosis to be triggered off, the Name-of-the-Father, verworfen, foreclosed, that is to say, never having attained the place of the Other, must be called into symbolic opposition to the subject.

It is the lack of the Name-of-the-Father in that place which, by the hole that it opens up in the signified, sets off the cascade of reshapings of the signifier from which the increasing disaster of the imaginary proceeds, to the point at which the level is reached at which signifier and signified are stabilized in the delusional metaphor.

But how can the Name-of-the-Father be called by the subject to the only place in which it could have reached him and in which it has never been? Simply by a real father, not necessarily by the subject’s own father, but by A [or ONE]-father [Un‐père can also be translated as One-father].

Again, this A[One]-father must attain that place to which the subject was unable to call him before. It is enough that this A[One]-father should be situated in a third position in some relation based on the imaginary dyad o-o’ [a-a’], that is to say, ego-object or reality-ideal, that interests the subject in the field of eroticized aggression that it induces.

Let us try to find this conjuncture at the beginning of the psychosis.

Whether it occurs, for the woman who has just given birth, in her husband’s face, for the penitent confessing his sins in the person of his confessor, for the girl in love in her meeting with ‘the young man’s father’, it will always be found, and be found more easily if one allows oneself to be guided by ‘situations’ in the sense in which the word is used of the novel.

P79 One-father, qualified in “L’Étourdit” as “without reason,” connotes the without-limit of the effects of his irruption due to the foreclosure. This passage from “L’Étourdit” on “sardonic precipitation” is an ironic writing of the paternal metaphor.

See Jack W. Stone’s translation, p50-51 of www.Freud2Lacan.com quoted above.

P79 “Woman has a relation with S(A)[A barred], and it is already in that respect that she is split/doubled, that she is not-all, since she can also have a relation with F.” [32] [32] Jacques Lacan, Encore, op. cit., p8l.

Seminar XX Encore (1972–1973) : From 21^st November 1972 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan

Seminar XX 13^th March 1973, pVIII 5-6 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : How then can we approach, imagine, that this relationship to the Other might be, somewhere, what determines that half – since moreover it is roughly the biological proportion – that half of speaking beings refer themselves to it? This is nevertheless what is written here on the board by this arrow starting from the The, from this The that cannot say itself. Nothing can be said about The woman. The woman has a relationship, a relationship with this S of O barred – S(Ø) – on the one hand – and it is already in this respect that she is reduplicated, that she is not-all since on the other hand she can have this relationship with this capital, F, that in analytic theory we designate by this phallus that I specify as being the signifier. The signifier which does not have a signified. The very one that is supported, that is supported in the case of man by this enjoyment [jouissance] of which, in order to point it up, I will say, I will put forward today that what best symbolises it, what is it after all, if not something that the importance of masturbation sufficiently underlines in our practice, what is it, except something which is nothing other, in what I might call favourable cases, than the enjoyment [jouissance] of the idiot?

P79 Obstacles to the Push-to-the-Woman?

P80 On the other hand, the extension of the use of the formula on the female side raises other questions, as noted by Frangois Leguil – for whom the use of the formula should be reserved for a male subject. [33] [33] Frangois Leguil, “Les deux corps du pousse à la femme,” Ornicar?, no.52 (November 2018): 106.

A copy of this has yet to be found.

Citations

Jacques-Alain Miller cited this text during the closure of the Grandes Assises virtuelles internationales de l’AMP – La femme n’existe pas – on 3rd April 2022, at the Maison de la mutualité, Paris and on Zoom. Also quoted by Jacques-Alain Miller in the presentation of the theme, towards the XIV Congress of the World Association of Psychoanalysts, 22-25 February 2024 (Zoom), on 30^th May 2023, “All the world is mad”, see https://congresamp2024.world/tout-le-monde-est-fou/

Quote in original French:

À nous servir de cette dialectique, la thèse comme absolu serait la disparition de toute pathologie et l’égalitarisme post-clinique. Cependant, dans l’intérêt du public, pour parer au désordre, voire aux destructions, que ne manquerait pas d’entraîner l’application aveugle du principe absolu, on conserverait les distinguos de la clinique au niveau subordonné de l’hypothèse. Je me permets de noter que cela réconcilierait le point de vue de mes collègues Dominique Laurent et François Leguil [5] avec le mien – thèse pour moi, hypothèse pour eux.

English: Using this dialectic, the thesis as absolute would be the disappearance of all pathology and post-clinical egalitarianism. However, in the public interest, to ward off the disorder, even destruction, that the blind application of the absolute principle would inevitably entail, we would retain the subtle distinctions of the clinic at the subordinate level of the hypothesis. Let me note that this would reconcile the point of view of my colleagues Dominique Laurent and François Leguil [5] with my own – thesis for me, hypothesis for them.

[5]. Cf. Laurent D., « Le pousse-à-la-femme : de la structure à la logique » & Leguil F., « L’érotomanie dépathologisée », interventions aux Grandes Assises, publiées dans le présent numéro.

Dominique Laurent published in this translation by The Lacanian Review

Julia Evans2023-09-09T16:43:15+01:00